Aldrich Ames Quotes

The difficulties of conducting espionage against the Soviet Union in the Soviet Union were such that historically the Agency had backed away from the task.

[CIA] Case officers most fear the US ambassador and his staff, then restrictive headquarters cables, then curious gossipy neighbors in the local community, as potential threats to the operation. Next would come the local police, then the press. Last of all is the KGB.

Intelligence officers are a peculiar lot. Whether they are active or retired, their brains are wired for a completely different way of seeing the world around them.

We need to strengthen our analytic capacity in Washington, we need to centralize the anti-terrorism effort.

'The Man Who Never Was,' by Ewen Montagu, remains the best book about wartime espionage written by an active participant - incomplete, and dry in parts, it nonetheless summons up the ingenuity and sheer eccentricity of those who played this strange and dangerous game.

Simply stated, the need for accurate intelligence and prescient analysis from CIA has never been greater than it is in 2013 - or than it will be in the coming years.

I think that, in the end, the military behavior and intelligence services are not very different from each other. It's an attitude of hunters; they're observing the prey.

Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.

Spying is a like a game of chess: Sometimes you have to withdraw, sometimes you have to sacrifice one of your pieces to win - preferably a knight rather than a king or queen.

The NSA's business is 'information dominance,' the use of other people's secrets to shape events.

…historically, the official personnel of the Soviet bloc countries assigned to this nation, including those at the United Nations, have been used extensively for espionage purposes…

Intelligence without counter-intelligence is useless.

The purpose of an intelligence service is to avoid war, not to promote one.

In covert action you always have to think of the endgame before you start it. We didn’t always do that.

Intelligence collection is not confined to the communications of adversaries or of the guilty. Rather, it's about gaining information otherwise unavailable that would help keep Americans safe and free.

Every intelligence operation carries risks.

Israelis cannot enter Iran, so Israel, Iranian officials believe, has devoted huge resources to recruiting Iranians who leave the country on business trips and turning them into agents.

As a former F.B.I. special agent who conducted counterintelligence investigations, I can attest that foreign intelligence services do not operate on the basis of explicit agreements or even actions that, standing alone, constitute criminal activity.

CIA has learned some tough lessons, especially when asked to tackle missions that fall outside our expertise.

I spent over ten years in the Central Intelligence Agency as an undercover operations officer serving overseas after 9/11 where I carried out covert operations against al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups, as well as other countries who are 'hostile to liberty,' as I like to say.

Having conducted counterintelligence investigations, I can attest that not everything a foreign intelligence service does is necessarily illegal.

Exposing the activities of a foreign intelligence service renders them ineffective, since it removes plausible deniability, which is the hallmark of covert intelligence operations.

No one demands more caution than a spy, and when someone has the skeleton key to minds, counter him by leaving the key of caution inside, on the other side of the keyhole.

How could your cover be blown in Canada? Why even bother going dark there? How could you tell?

When you're dealing with espionage and covert affairs, sometimes the secret is more exciting than the knowledge.